London has been overrun and destroyed. Faced with increasing hordes of demons entering our world, the last bastion of human population is dwindling, out-numbered with no chance of survival. In these dark times humanity is faced with a final dire question of fate: do we continue the fight and let the demons slaughter us or do we kill ourselves so they cannot?
For Hellgate: London players, Namco-Bandai has answered that question: suicide. In an announcement on the HGL site, Namco-Bandai has stated the HGL servers will remain online and free to use until January 31, 2009 at which time the plug will be pulled and the game will be discontinued.
Tags: MMO GamingSanta Clara, Calif., (October 24, 2008) – NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc., today announced that they will continue to support customers of PC game Hellgate™: London with online server support and play through January 31, 2009 despite the closure of Flagship Studios. In a further gesture of support, Namco Bandai Games will provide this server support free of charge to all fans and players of the game up until the shut down date.
Loading ...
on 
Entries (RSS)
And of note..
Any NEW purchases cannot set up a scrip.
In so many words….purchasing is not even an option.
What a mess!
I threw up an honorary song HG:L on Blip.FM
Our Happiest Days Slowly Began To Turn Into Dust
Enjoy
I’m a bit surprised. Namco Bandai reportedly took the Hellgate IP as collateral for the financing they gave Flagship. If they close it they’re not going to get any more money from it. I guess the game has less subs than the cost of running a couple of computers 24/7 with one guy to monitor them? Ouch.
Guess I’ll reinstall and patch to the latest version before that date so I can still play through the single player if I want to.
When all this went down in July, all subscriptions were made free anyway, so no Namco-Bandai weren’t gaining anything from the game. It’s a shame, people have been playing, and surely these instanced-only servers can’t be prohibitively expensive to run? Especially for such low-population games?
On the other hand, perhaps the cost of putting together a new development team for a game with a forever-tarnished reputation just wasn’t worth it in the end. At least if SOE had bought the IP it could have been placed on Station Pass for life support.
I’ve purchased 2 “Lifetime” subscriptions to games. One was for LOTRO and I’ve never regretted it. The other was for, you guessed it, Hellgate: London. I no longer can recall the logic that led me to make that decision: I guess I just believed Bill Roper and crew could beat the game into shape given time. Actually I did enjoy it for a while… I dodged all the crash problems that so many people had to deal with and the game was pretty fun for a few weeks, but boyo, did it get monotonous over time.
I wonder what’s going on with Mythos? Now *that* game was pretty fun!
Lifetime subs I think prove a dangerous prerogative for any MMO to take.
Look at what Hellgate has done…
And LOTRO was such a big letdown, and makes me glad I never decided to go lifetime there.
Lifetime subs are a risky move for any MMO, and for players as well who will get burned.
Say no to Lifetimes!
Cameron and I are having a similar discussion on his blog, also sparked over Hellgate’s demise.
I absolutely think Lifetime Memberships are valuable, though not without inherent risk.
For me, LOTRO ended up being my main game and the lifetime membership has already paid for itself. Mines of Moria has a feature list (on paper) that is more exciting to me than the lists of any other expansion or full game coming out in the near future as well, so now the personal value of that lifetime has increased.
But if people jumped on the Lifetime for LOTRO or Hellgate without trying the games, just on hype alone, then they were burned. Doubly so for Hellgate since it’s being canceled.
I was annoyed at EA for not offering a Lifetime for WAR. Not that I would have jumped on it immediately without trying the game anyway, but I assumed the game would be of higher quality and larger scope than it turned out to be.
$150 to $200 for a Lifetime that you never use, or the game has a much shorter life than expected, is a waste. But so is dropping $50 to $60 on every new MMO that comes down the pike and never playing them. EQ2, AoC, and now WAR. Right there’s $150 or so for three games I will probably never play again. That’s also a waste.
I won’t necessarily blame Flagship and only Flagship for Hellgate’s rough and brief life. I’ll put a lot of blame on EA who at the 13th hour decided to market the game as an MMO. Perhaps it was Flagship and Roper all along who designed it as a monthly subscription game, however? I didn’t follow the game much nor jump on the hype/fanboy bandwagon. It’s a fun multiplayer game, not an MMO at all, and it’s a rather boring singleplayer shooter-RPG. It should have been left at that, and used some other business model to support the servers and future content development. Arena.net pulled it off, after all…
There’s still a possibility that Hellgate will be resurrected and your lifetime membership will still be good.
Good find Aaron. If so, excellent.
Was still a major risk, and there is no guarantee that this company will honor those lifetime’s.
The Korean company taking over also could lead to free scrips and item shops…hmmm.
Wonder how that will go over (i.e: the American audiences HATE cash shops)
Interesting.